


Two Guys on a Raft Who (don't) Want to Be There

by IlliterateReader



Series: The Raft AU [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Murder, Based on a Tumblr Post, Boots - Freeform, Discussions on Genocide, Discussions on Propaganda and Racism, Fish, For Want of a Nail, Gen, Hakoda (Avatar) is a Good Parent, Hakoda's sense of humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ozai's A+ Parenting, Slowburn Adoption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24993754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IlliterateReader/pseuds/IlliterateReader
Summary: It took a second of non-hungover thought for Hakoda to realize just how bad the situation was. He was stuck on a raft. In the open ocean. With no one but the Prince of the Fire Nation for company.With no food or water, or tools to acquire either. They broke his spear and ruined his boomerang.Hakoda and Zuko end up on a raft AU. Inspired by an ask by Muffinlance which said that this was apparently the OG premise for Salvage.
Relationships: Hakoda & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: The Raft AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809331
Comments: 142
Kudos: 2366
Collections: AtLA <25k fics to read, Best of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Koi’s atla fic recs, Zuko and The Water Tribe





	Two Guys on a Raft Who (don't) Want to Be There

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Salvage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21116591) by [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance). 



> Disclaimer: I own nothing. The characters and locations are owned by the creators of A:TLA. The Wani, the Akhlut, Zuko's Crew, and Hakoda's Crew are all owned by Muffinlance.
> 
> Inspired by this tumblr post: https://muffinlance.tumblr.com/post/187841214606/i-love-that-this-post-shamelessly-shows-that-you
> 
> I've been working on this thing for a month and a half. So... here it is.
> 
> Tumblr is whats-a-reading if you want to check it out.

Hakoda was never drinking before a raid again. Nevermind how much better he would feel right now if he didn’t remember how he ended up on a raft with the teenaged Fire Prince.

Who was not hungover, unfortunately, and loved shouting.

“LISTEN HERE, WATER TRIBE, IF IT WASN’T FOR YOU RAIDING OUR SHIP WE WOULDN’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH EACH OTHER RIGHT NOW!”

The angry, too damn _loud_ firebender sat down with a huff, hopefully not planning to shove him over the side. In his current state, he might even _lose_ to this brat.

Oh. Good. He finally stopped. Now the world could keep rocking in peace _without_ the massive headache. 

“—BESIDES, WHAT MADE YOU RAID _MY_ SHIP ANYWAY? DID THE EARTH KINGDOM PUT YOU UP TO THIS? WHAT USE DO YOU THINK I—”

He spoke too soon. Spirits help him.

—————

It took a second of non-hungover thought for Hakoda to realize just how bad the situation was. He was stuck on a raft. In the open ocean. With no one but the Prince of the Fire Nation for company. 

With no food or water, or tools to acquire either. They broke his spear and ruined his boomerang.

_Take inventory._ He might not have weapons or tools, but he had a _companion_ , for lack of a better word, with him. And on the off chance that the firebender had weapons, he wouldn’t be caught off guard, at least.

Hakoda was a simple man. There was no need for dancing around a subject when a blunt question would do.

“Do you have any weapons?”

“Why are you asking?” Answering a question with another. Of course. The Fire Nation probably taught its children to never cooperate with Water Tribe _savages_.

“If you have any weapons, they can be used to catch fish.” Straight and to the point. Hakoda hoped that the Prince would prioritize living over the sense of pride that was standard in his nation.

“I have a knife.” The Prince unsheathed a knife from his boot and showed him.

_Made in Earth Kingdom_

Hakoda knew that Fire Nation soldiers enlisted young. Hakoda also knew that Fire Nation royals had a disturbing tradition of doing active duty. Now was not the time to put those two facts together and know why the Prince of the Fire Nation owns an Earth Kingdom knife.

Hakoda also knew that it would be easier for the Prince to cooperate if he wasn’t forced to give up his weapon. Not that it would matter when push came to shove, literally. Although Hakoda hoped he wouldn’t have to.

“Can you spear fish?” Hakoda didn’t know the specifics of Fire Nation education, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

“I am Crown Prince Zuko, son of Ursa and Firelord Ozai.”

“You’re not answering the question. Can you, or can you not, _Your Highness_?”

The brat’s silence spoke for itself. Hakoda wondered what force of nature made him hope in the first place.

—————

“Hand me your knife.”

“What? No! I AM NOT GOING TO HAND OVER MY ONLY WEAPON!”

“I’m going to catch us some fish. Unless you’d rather starve than lower yourself to working with a Water Tribe savage?”

“...Fine.”

—————

The Prince held a gutted fish in his hands as it steamed. This was the most awkward cooking set up Hakoda had ever experienced, beating even the Winter Sundrying Incident.

The silence stretched and pulled like Hakoda’s time at sea, leaving him homesick and wanting to never deal with a firebender ever again. He had to end it. The staring contest was unnerving with those _inhuman_ yellow eyes of his.

“Is eating with your hands acceptable for you, _Your Highness_?”

The Prince glared at him and took a bite. 

—————

Food was no longer a problem. Ironically, water was still hard to come by. In the middle of the ocean. _Tui and La_ , what he would give to have Katara with him instead of a firebender. Katara wasn’t with him right now, but Hakoda was going to make this work. 

Firebender means that the Prince could boil water, unless the training accident rumor held, well, water. The steam needed a cover to condense into something actually drinkable. That was simple. He had a knife available and excess fabric from their clothes. From Hakoda’s, if the royal brat was above any damage to his. A substitute for a bowl was much less available on a raft, but Hakoda was certain that he could make do somehow.

If he squinted, tilted his head to the left, and moved back two steps, boots could work out. He needed two differently sized containers. Spirits. _Bato can’t ever know._

He had to deal with explaining this whole set up to the firebender. _La_ , Katara or Sokka would have made everything so much easier. His precious, brilliant children. 

No use musing about what-ifs. 

Operation: Clean Water was a go.

—————

 _First._ Boiling rids water of its impurities, like salt.

“Can you boil water?”

“Of course I can! Do you think I’m a bad firebender?” Hakoda wisely did not mention the training accident rumor or look at the Prince’s incensed face.

_Second._ Steam needed a lid to control where it condenses.  
_Third._ Cloth was reasonably watertight.

“Knife.”

“Are you going to stab another fish with it?” The Prince was being sarcastic with him. _Joy._

“I’m working on getting us clean water. Steam needs a place to cool before it turns back into water. That means I need to improvise and use part of my shirt. You’ll see what it’s for. Now hand me the knife.”

_Fourth._ Their boots were the only available containers. And both pairs were needed.

Hakoda liked this part the least. He’d have to be a literal bootlicker to survive, drinking out of the Prince’s smaller footwear. It was humiliating. There was cold comfort in the fact that the Prince wouldn’t like it either.

“We need containers to keep the water in. Unfortunately, the only ones available are our boots.”

“Our boots?”

“Mine for salt water. Yours for the filtered water. We’ll have to insert your boots in mine. Might as well make two devices for this. If I’m drinking out of your boot, I’m not sharing it with you.” 

The Prince gave him an inscrutable look. Hakoda held his gaze, waiting for an answer. The Fire Prince blinked once and gave a slight nod. “I wouldn’t want to subject my boots to your stench more than I have to, either.” 

Hakoda finally got the assent he needed, but that didn’t mean he liked it. The Prince took the opportunity to put him down, like all he was in the Prince’s eyes was a peasant, even though his proposal meant survival.

The Prince took off his boots a moment after Hakoda did.

Another moment later, they both started scrubbing. The Prince used boiling water.

—————

Hakoda lost track of time. But they were still scrubbing. At some point, they’d swapped boots because the Prince argued that boiling water would clean them more.

Hakoda kept scrubbing. At least his boots were being cleaned diligently by the firebender next to him.

—————

It was some time later when the Prince did a surprise inspection of his boots and deemed them worthy. Hakoda didn’t think that ashmaker soles were ever worthy of even touching his boots, but needs must. 

_La_ , why are Fire Nation boots pointed. This was inconvenient. Who was Hakoda kidding, it was downright painful. It was putting, more like squishing, one boot inside another. A Fire Nation boot inside his. This felt like an obscure metaphor that no one wanted to coin but some traveling bard did anyway, or some ill-fated prediction.

No, the Prince was not having any better luck with his attempt.

—————

The worst was hopefully over. Hakoda carefully filled his boots with seawater and covered both openings with cloth. He handed over both double-boot inventions to the firebender. 

Hakoda could only put his palms to his temples and pray that the Prince’s boots were clean enough as to not infect him with anything.

—————

There wasn’t much to do on an idle raft besides food and water. The firebender just sat there, one of Hakoda’s boots in each hand, completely focused on the ridiculous ordeal of getting drinking water. Hakoda was stabbing another fish with a knife that was far from suited to the task.

It was near sundown when the firebender had finished boiling the water. The Prince handed one of the boot-filters to him.

Hakoda untied the fabric on top. 

Time to test it.

Not bad. He didn’t account for the campfire smell, but it was surprisingly pleasant. The firebender may have caught him doing a discreet sniff. Hakoda’s look said denial.

Small victories. But the day was not over. Hakoda had one last thing to ensure: the tentative trust between them.

“I know that neither of us want to be here right now. But we won’t get off this raft if we can’t work together. Let’s lay some ground rules.” Hakoda took the Prince’s scowl as a reluctant yes. 

“Number one. No threats on this raft. Yes. That means no firebending from you, unless you want to burn down this raft. Number two. A man earns his food. You will do your share of providing for water, and you will let me use the knife when I fish. Number three.” Hakoda ran out of rules off the top of his head, but three generally rounded out sets. “Three. There will be mutual respect for boundaries. No pushing or entering another man’s space without permission. Are these acceptable, _Your Highness_?”

The Prince clearly had an objection. It was written all over his face. “Yes. _Sir._ ” Apparently he had read the Prince wrong. Hakoda thought that the firebender was going to yell at him for deigning to set rules or impose on his royal presence. Apparently not. Apparently he didn’t want to put up a fuss.

It was going too smoothly so far. Hakoda had a feeling he was in for a bad time. 

—————

In retrospect, Hakoda should have known that everything was about to go wrong when, not even a day later, the _ashmaker_ was rapidly shooting bolts of fire at a tuna-trout, stalking towards Hakoda’s side of the raft in an attempt to follow the fleeing prey. 

The ashmaker peered up at his ‘tsk’. His yellow eyes wary, like a predator sizing Hakoda up.

He tilted his head, his face a mockery of Sokka’s when his precious son ate all the seal jerky and insisted otherwise. The Prince—the _Crown Prince_ of the _Fire Nation_ had the audacity to look innocent while making kindling of their tentative agreement last night.

Hakoda was a reasonable man. The ashmaker had to deal with the consequences, not that the _royal_ understood that, he guessed.

“And just _what_ were you doing? _Your. Highness._ ”

His head jerked, the movement exaggerated by his ridiculous ponytail. “I WAS JUST TRYING TO GET US FOOD! I know you think I’ll burn down the raft out of spite but that isn’t true! And besides, YOUR RULES–” The exclamation was punctuated by a wide arc of fire, sputtering and sparking dangerously close to Hakoda’s boot-cup. “–DON’T HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST WHAT I’M DOING! I’m almost a meter away from you, and catching fish isn’t threatening you!” 

_Tui and La_ , was the Prince lacking self awareness? Or was he deaf? Hakoda remembered the way his head didn’t tilt yesterday, so any deafness was on purpose.

“I know that you might think yourself above listening to so-called _barbarians_ , but you must be stupid if you think I’m buying that innocent excuse. Just spit out why you decided to intimidate me with that display of yours, ashmaker!”

The Prince snarled. “ _Don’t._ Call. Me. That. And don’t play dumb with me! I just explained that I WAS TRYING TO CATCH A FISH!” He stomped even closer, blazing eyes dared to try enforcing superiority.

Hakoda would not bow down to Fire Nation dog-snakes. “I was very clear. I told you that you can’t threaten with your firebending, and that you can’t invade my space. Now will you stop being so above it all and accept a reasonable punishment, or are you trying to uphold the honor you don’t have?” 

The ashmaker’s fists were smoldering and primed to strike.

Now was the time to put two and two together and acknowledge what Hakoda didn’t when he first saw the Prince’s knife. The _Fire Lord’s_ son wasn’t some boy that was kept out of the war like Sokka. He took after _them_ and ruthlessly claimed territory to raze and prizes to show off to captive audience chiefs. As much as Hakoda instinctively wanted to hold back, the risk of the ashmaker taking advantage of the situation was too great.

Hakoda lunged. 

The Prince dodged. There went his surprise advantage.

The rest of the fight reminded Hakoda of Bato’s wedding dance. Then, he’d laughed at Bato’s sore feet and inability to lead. Now, Hakoda was far too similar to his best friend for comfort.

It was ending too quickly, and not to Hakoda’s benefit. He tried to interrupt the ashmaker’s offensive with a well-placed strike to the shin. He dodged and launched a spinning flaming kick that left Hakoda crouched near the edge of the raft.

In his terrible rage and tunnel vision, the Prince was blindsided to the boot-cup thrown from his peripheral left. It wasn't enough to trip him up, _spirits_.

One misstep was all it took to do what Hakoda could not, and the ashmaker’s body went splash. 

For a second, the world turned upside down, and the Fire Prince was people to Hakoda as he went under.

—————

The Southern Water Tribe prided itself on embracing the water and moving like the tides. Hakoda’s sympathy for the teen retreated like the low-tide as the Prince kicked and made his way back up to the raft in an instant.

“YOU TRIED TO FUCKING DROWN ME!” The Prince said as he steamed himself dry.

“You tried to set me and my… water container on fire.” Restraint was necessary. Hakoda felt like it was more blind luck that saved him than his skill in countering flaming acrobatics from an Imperial class firebender. 

“I WASN’T TRYING TO MURDER YOU, THAT WAS SELF DEFENSE!” An errant thought slipped into his head. _The Prince really was that loud and his tirade on the first day was no outlier._ Spirits _help him._

“Was that really self defense? I’ve seen several men with less battle-lust than you.” And then because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, an unfortunate habit that was passed to Sokka, he added, “I would’ve at least given you a proper funeral, if you weren’t able to swim back up.”

“Would you really have put in the effort to retrieve my body and cremate it properly? I don’t think so.” The firebender misunderstood. Hakoda would not stoop to burning corpses when the option to respectfully send a soul off to sea was right there.

“That’s not a proper funeral in the Water Tribes. What I meant was that the ocean is right there, and I would have sat vigil for you as the water guided your soul.”

“You _drown_ your dead?” The firebender was incredulous.

“You burn yours.” _And ours and everyone else’s_ , Hakoda added in his head. He wasn't going to say that thought. The firebender was on edge. Hakoda was not up for either type of burial. Especially not after a funeral almost occurred in front of him.

“You still tried to kill me. You were going to leave me to drown. In the water.” The Prince looked at Hakoda like he had just smeared the blood of otter-seal pups on his face and laughed while he did so. “It’s a good thing I can swim then.”

“...Yes. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting that, because you can’t fish.” At that comment, the Prince stared at him, seemingly unable to understand why that meant he suddenly couldn’t swim in Hakoda’s mind.

Something in Hakoda’s face must have prompted him to explain. “The Fire Nation is an archipelago. And it’s much easier to learn how to swim when the water won’t instantly kill you.”

His eyes looked reminiscent of General Fong’s glazed look when he just _had_ to explain the functions of a militia to Hakoda and his men, despite knowing full well that they knew exactly what he was talking about. Minus the knowledge of Hakoda knowing, and plus the impression that he thought Hakoda should be smarter than a five year old. Alright, perhaps the two were more different than what he initially figured, but the Prince was still talking down to him.

“I know,” he replied, bored. “Why were you so horrified at thinking you were going to drown, when you can swim?”

“In the Fire Nation, we burn our dead because we believe that the fire brings them back to Agni. I guess it’s like how you believe that the ocean guides souls in the Water Tribes. To be stuck in the dark and cold, forever? That’s…” The Prince shuddered slightly. “...That’s– that’s never getting rest. Ever. You’d have to spend your last moments having your fire ripped from you by everything around you, and you know that you’ll never get any peace ever again, and you have to deal with that being your fate because the water’s already in your lungs.”

Hakoda didn’t quite know what to respond to that. So he didn’t. The firebender continued.

“Especially firebenders. You die in the dark, alone, cut off from your inner fire. You can’t bend your way out of the ocean, even if you’ve figured out flame propulsion, because firebending comes from the breath and that’s the first thing the ocean takes. Drowning is the worst, because it cuts us off from our element.” He finished lamely.

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Not really. I almost drowned at three, but I don’t remember that.” The Prince was about as open and forthcoming as the Northern Water Tribe. Hakoda let the silence speak for the both of them.

—————

They were sharing a fish. Hakoda didn’t know where he stood with the other person on this raft. That made sharing a fish difficult. That was going to make sharing fish difficult in the foreseeable future, seeing as they were still stuck on this raft.

“So. We’ll need to be able to trust each other if we both want to get off the raft.” 

“How about you don’t try to shove me off again?” 

“I’ll admit that was wrong. And I won’t. But you’re also at fault for almost setting the whole raft on fire, as well as my… boot.”

“If you didn’t set your stupid rule on my firebending, I wouldn’t have even come close to setting the raft on fire.” What. How could being allowed to firebend reduce the risk of fire on the raft. Hakoda hated the stupid calculations the raft kept forcing him to make. They never made any sense. Especially those involving the Prince in some way, which was all of them.

Hakoda voiced this sentiment. “ _What._ You’re going to need to explain that.”

The firebender suddenly found his socks interesting. “I can’t just _not_ bend. I’m not a good enough bender to do that.” At Hakoda’s long-confused look, the firebender clarified. “I need to meditate with a flame. It helps control.” He sounded like he was forcing every word out. Hakoda guessed that the admission hurt his pride.

“You should have brought that up when I first set the rules. Was that what you were objecting to?”

“...Yeah.” The teen gave a tight nod. “But for the record, you had no right penalizing me for trying to fish.” For the record, _trying_ was the key word here.

Hakoda sighed. One of the reasons for this may or may not have been because Sokka had a better grasp on fishing at five. “Well, I suppose this means we renegotiate.”

—————

“...But I’m fucking trying, and I think I’m getting it. If I can catch a fish with firebending, it does more good than harm to just let me.” 

Hakoda was moments from strangling the boy. Or pushing him off the side. Metaphorically. This was not a good sign on how negotiations were going. _Tui and La_ , this boy is the future Firelord. Hakoda hoped that he wouldn’t have to worry about that once they won the war, and that the Fire Nation would _not_ have Sozin’s line in charge afterwards. Otherwise, the Fire Nation was going to deal with Diplomatic Incidents.

Hakoda needed a break.

Unfortunately, what Hakoda needed and what Hakoda got were mutually exclusive for the past two years. And it is with this thought that he pinched the bridge of his nose and finally replied.

“You don’t know how to catch fish. I’m banning you from catching fish, not firebending in general. I just clarified that you can’t use your firebending to catch fish because then, we’d end up with a burnt fish and no food.”

The teen was persistent about his non-existent fishing skill for some reason. Hakoda was going to just _rest_ his fingers on his nose bridge. 

They were going to _rest_ there for a long time.

—————

“...We can’t afford any more misunderstandings. For clarity’s sake, can you repeat everything that we agreed upon?” 

“There will be mutual respect for boundaries, my task is to collect and purify water while yours is fishing, you must ask permission for my knife before using it, I will meditate supervised for about an hour every day, and no slurs or insults.” The Prince sounded like Sokka when he was told to recite the line of Chiefs, complete with the unsaid plea to never make him do it again. 

Hakoda held in a sigh of relief. His fingers weren’t going to numb on his nose after all. That was it, then. He could safely call the Prince an acquaintance. So he would. No harm in being clear.

“Acquaintances?”

“Acquaintances.” 

They shook on it.

“Now hand me that knife of yours. It’s almost time for dinner.”

It was much easier to focus on fish than to ponder on what just happened.

—————

Fish again. Hakoda missed seaprune dinners from home or the Akhlut, but it wasn’t like he had any way to obtain or cook those. 

His acquaintance brought him out of his musing.

“I figured it’d be safer if I did it at night. The fire would be weaker.” He gestured for Hakoda to sit closer, slightly resembling a cornered cat as he did so. 

Ah. He was trying to gain his trust. Hakoda sat closer.

He kept watch. The boy held a flame cupped in his palm. 

Hakoda was no stranger to bending. He was an accomplished warrior and proud father to a waterbender, but nothing prepared him for how alien it was to see fire as a limb, compared to the weapon it always was. And from what he knew, the practice of meditation was unique to Fire, now. His Grangran had told him of the push and pull of the water, the literal building blocks of their people, but nothing about having to sit and feel it. Water was _doing_ , as was Fire, but Hakoda never thought about the similarities of the two until now. And yet the element that _did_ to ravage and spread genocide, the element that ran wild and out of control, was following the Prince’s breathing. Push and pull. In, out.

He should have found it strange. It _was_ strange. Then again, he was acquaintances with the Prince of the Fire Nation after drinking water out of their boots, and it was all due to being stuck on a raft. He blamed his casual acceptance of the Prince’s meditation on _that_.

—————

Hakoda didn’t so much as _find_ sleep as chase it and have it backflip over him before being hit in the head with unconsciousness. 

_There were trees. And sand. And they were all having a… picnic? They were on a beach in the Earth Kingdom. And they were happy._

_His wife was haggling with the merchants a few paces away. La, she was a treasure._

_“Kya!” he called out._

_Kya turned, and she was Katara._

_“Dad! You failed us. You weren’t there when we needed you. I hate you!”_

_No._

_“Dad, I can’t hunt as well as you. Are you happy, going off to the war and forgetting about us?” Sokka stared at him, unblinking._

_Left._

_He was on the Akhlut, having stewed seaprunes. Scuttles was happily barking on his left. Bato laughed and cajoled and told him to stuff as many as he could in his mouth._

_He looked down._

_The seaprunes were wiggling and escaping._

_“Come on, Hakoda! You love seaprunes!” Bato put one in his mouth. The seaprunes Bato grabbed weren’t wiggling._

_He tried to tell Bato that the seaprunes were wiggling, but his mouth wouldn’t open._

_Down._

_He wasn’t on the Akhlut anymore. He opened his eyes blearily, the shifting night sky gave him an odd sense of place. He was on a raft, with a boy sitting next to him, pleading. That he’ll be more like his sister, just give him a chance, please. Oh no. Sokka, what has he done wrong?_

_Up._

_He was in the middle of a battle. Toklo ran past him and got speared in the shoulder. There was lightning everywhere, and the Earth Kingdom army was falling. He was falling too, the ground was ash, and then it was dust and he was falling through—_

_Up._

_Sokka caught a fish. It turned into a polarbear goose and tried to eat him._

_Up._

_He was on a Fire Nation ship, or at least he guessed it was. Things were fuzzy but there was a red Fire Nation flag, as well as metal. And spikes._

_He was having tea. The man across him had his features in shadow, even though the room was well-lit. Strange. The table was on fire— no, the table was the fire. His eyebrows were almost seared off. The man was a silhouette now._

_“Raid them. The next Avatar could have been born in the South.”_

_Hakoda tried to stand. He was going to stab—_

_Up._

_A ball of fire hovered in front of him, holding a teacup._

_“Take care of him.”_

_Down._

He woke with a start.

—————

It wasn’t even dawn yet. Hakoda wanted to go back to sleep. No amount of bribery or polardog cub eyes would ever make him a morning person, a pity Toklo learned this the hard way.

Well, he was awake and hungry now. Might as well get food. 

There was one problem with that. He pledged to always ask for permission when using the knife, and the teen was still sleeping. 

He walked two steps to wake him briefly.

There were now two problems in the way of Operation: Fish Breakfast Again. 

_Spirits_ , Hakoda was not equipped to deal with anything in the morning on a good day. And now Prince Zuko was curled in on himself, the sight an identical mirror of his dream earlier. 

Hakoda was backing off and getting breakfast later. 

There wasn’t much room for a man’s dignity on the raft. 

He’d let the Prince cling to whatever pride he had left after having to go two days without bathing. Hakoda would leave him to have nightmares about the current lack of world-conquering he was doing. He wouldn’t listen in on whatever the other was murmuring. 

It was the least he could do.

—————

Prince Zuko did his best impression of one of those sunflowers as the sun rose. 

Ah good. Both obstacles to Operation: Fish Breakfast Again were eliminated as his acquaintance handed him the knife with a tired stare and no tear tracks. Well, that helped his plausible deniability. Hakoda wasn’t grateful, exactly, but it was something.

As he waited for the fish to come to them, Hakoda had to admit he was curious. The teen next to him who was dutifully boiling their water didn’t match the image Hakoda built up in his head. Was he arrogant? Yes. Was he _Fire Nation_? Yes, through and through. Was he a spoiled brat? Yes, and Hakoda wanted to yell at him to shut up every other conversation. But he’d stopped coming off as the type to own that knife. No matter how much the inscription on the other side matched the teen’s personality, he wasn’t buying it.

It didn’t add up. He was curious. So he asked. 

“My uncle gave it to me.” Hakoda knew about Prince Zuko’s uncle, General Iroh the Dragon of the West, alright, but he refused to jump to conclusions. It was what led to the fight on the raft in the first place. For all Hakoda knew, his maternal uncle was a merchant who received the knife secondhand.

“On which side?”

Prince Zuko didn’t understand why Hakoda bothered to ask. Perhaps uncles were like scars in the Fire Nation, and people never asked about that. Or maybe he only had one uncle and didn’t understand when people asked _which one_. In any case, he answered and he didn’t. “Uncle Iroh.” The unsaid _Who else?_ hung off the end of that response.

Hakoda was almost tempted to answer with _For all I know you have a merchant uncle on your mother's side whom I haven't heard of_ , but he held his tongue. Instead, he responded with the eloquent, “Oh.”

The conversation died as it began: because of Hakoda. But Hakoda wanted answers, which was why he decided to revive the flaming mess of a dialogue.

“Where'd General Iroh get that knife from, then?”

“The general who surrendered at the Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se gave it to him.” 

Hakoda found a carp-trout. He proceeded to stab it. It flopped for a few moments before it finally died. 

As did the conversation.

—————

“Why are you staring at seaweed like it’s an orca penguin?”

“...Is that edible?”

“It is. A benefit of spending two years at sea, I can tell which floating patches of kelp are edible.”

“I’ve spent three. I missed out on those lessons.” Wait, what? Why did the Prince of the Fire Nation spend three years at sea in a… small by their standards vessel. 

Hakoda cursed internally at his brain’s habit of collecting things to _wonder_ about being much like Katara's attitude with strays. 

“ _Your Highness_ , your ship most likely didn’t need floating patches of kelp. That’s understandable.”

“That’s true.” He nodded. “So, do I roast these,” he asked while holding up some seaweed.

“You could.”

He did. And Hakoda had something that wasn’t steamed, and more importantly, wasn’t fish for once.

—————

“ _By Tui and La_ , that is not how you catch a fish!”

“You’re saying that you don’t stab the fish?”

“No! How are you this stubborn?”

“I don’t know! Just show me how to catch the stupid fish!”

“Firstly, your knife isn’t effective or suited for Water Tribe fishing. Or fishing in general.”

“It’s the only weapon we have! Do you think you can fish with your hands?”

Hakoda felt like sighing. On second thought, the “display of power” yesterday was more of a “display of ignorance” on the Prince’s part. He had a lesson to teach. 

—————

“How are you worse than Sokka when he first started out?!” Hakoda started teaching his son at five.

“I DON’T KNOW!”

“You know, it’s a good thing that I didn’t mean “every man earns his food” too literally. That won’t even feed a newborn.”

“Newborns don’t eat anything. They drink milk.”

“The point is, why were you using the flat? What were you trying to accomplish by flipping it up in the air?”

—————

“Ugh, I smell like fucking fish. This stinks!”

“Could be worse. You could smell like shit.”

“How are you okay with this?!”

“We don’t have that many clothes, and we don’t do laundry too frequently. If you’re not used to everyone smelling like sweat, you’d never last in the naval life.”

“How often do you do laundry then, for all of you to end up smelling like sweat?”

“Weekly. Laundry duty’s the worst when there’s no warm water, or so I’ve heard anyway.” He chuckled, remembering the time he had to bribe Ranalok with extra seaprunes to get him to do it.

“Laundry duty’s the worst? What about latrine duty then? Unless you all just piss over the side. Uh.” His face said _I take it back, sorry, so sorry Chief_ , but his voice said _sorry Chief savage. I forgot_. So the Prince had some level of self-preservation. Apparently.

“We have latrines. You don’t need bending to have a bathroom.”

“But laundry duty being worse than latrine duty still doesn’t make sense. How does latrine duty work, then? I don’t think you’d have that many waterbenders with you that you could just piss in several buckets and have them clean in an instant.”

Hakoda was done talking about piss and laundry. 

“There are no waterbenders left in the Southern Water Tribe. Your _grandfather_ made sure of that. Like father, like son, huh?” Yes, yes, _the sins of the fathers_ , but Hakoda thought himself justified. It was the Firelord’s family after all.

“Wait, you don’t know your tribe has one? Where were you anyway when I visited your village? Uh. Your village is fine, by the way! I left it alone, except for the shit watchtower by some guy with a boomerang.”

Shit. He knew about Katara. The Prince of the Fire Nation was claiming to have visited his village, as well as having destroyed whatever defenses Sokka put up.

Double shit. Ah, Bato was always the one with the swear words. Hakoda was going to settle for _fucking shit_.

“You’ve met my children?”

The Prince’s face, or the side that didn’t look grumpy and constipated all the time, had a look of extreme regret at calling Sokka’s watchtower “shit”.

“Er, I mean, his watchtower was… tall? My ship rammed into it.” _Tui and La_ , you couldn’t pay him to give a compliment. Didn’t the Fire Nation have a court? How did he survive _that_ , lying as well as he did?

“Well, now you know. Katara’s a Southern waterbender. How’d you find that out?”

“Well, both of them were traveling with the Avatar—” What?

“—and I was, ah, chasing the Avatar?” What.

Hakoda needed the full story out of that.

—————

“It all started when I saw a light…”

“—and then your son, ah, bravely faced my ship on his own. I got hit with the boomerang. I thought I dodged it.”

“The Avatar is a master at evasive maneuvers. Even with his bison, he was always unpredictable.”

“—I didn’t mean to burn down Kyoshi, but it happened anyway. What was the Avatar even doing there? Also, your son was fighting with a bunch of girls in dresses. So the Unagi—”

“The waterbender—your daughter, left her necklace on a prison rig for earthbenders. I wasn’t there, stop making that face at me, I had nothing to do with that!” A pause. “It’s on the ship. I have no idea where they are now, so it’s not like I can give it back to her now. Besides the whole… raft thing.”

“—The next thing I knew, my uncle was wearing a loincloth, and he was in earthbender custody. He left his sweaty sandal behind.”

“—And then I followed them through the blockade—”

“No, I don’t know what they were doing at Roku’s temple. Probably Avatar stuff. Zhao showed up for some reason, oh I forgot I never explained Zhao.”

“—I mean, I’m sure you raised your children properly, no matter what the pirates said... And then I may have tied your daughter to a tree—”

“—his stupid fucking shopping, and then it was in his sleeve the whole time! And he proverbed without even meaning to! The only good laugh I got—”

“—And now, I don’t know where they are”, he ended.

None of this was good for Hakoda’s blood pressure. Or his hair. 

—————

Hakoda was going to sleep again. Somehow, it felt safer compared to last night. Must be because he now knew that the Prince wasn’t going to kill him in his sleep. Or do any light maiming. He preferred his face un-maimed, thank you very much.

But first he needed to paddle some more. They were only two meters from the impromptu bathroom zone they made of the ocean. And it was nearer to his side of the raft. The firebender might have needed to sleep already, but Hakoda was used to staying awake long past moonrise.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Prince Zuko on the other side of the raft. He looked… exactly the same as last night. Or was it this morning?

Hakoda wasn’t supposed to be focusing on that.

But Hakoda wasn’t supposed to be focusing on how the Prince wasn’t quiet tonight, either.

There wasn’t much room for a man’s dignity on a raft. His paddling proved that.

Hakoda pretended that he didn’t get a front seat view of the Fire Nation’s dishonor, with the way the teen sounded like he was on his knees.

Hakoda didn’t wonder. He wasn’t supposed to. It didn’t matter that he didn’t need to, to know that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

He didn’t have the right to this. They were acquaintances, only brought together by a mutual need of survival.

Right?

(Somewhere, everywhere, and nowhere in the Spirit World, Agni and Tui both laughed. Below, La joined in.)

The raft drifted several paces in the direction he was paddling, even though there was no wind.

With no paddling left to be done, Hakoda went to sleep and didn’t think of sons begging to make their fathers proud. 

He didn’t dream about it either.

—————

It was long past sunrise when Hakoda arose. He wasn’t thinking about last night. It was the least he could do.

The Prince just finished shaving his head into his ridiculous ponytail where the only patch of hair was a rhombus. Or something. 

Or something indeed. Hakoda wasn’t sure. The Southern Water Tribe never had formal schooling beyond literacy and traditions. 

Either way, it looked ridiculous. Hakoda couldn’t even determine if it was a Fire Nation thing or a royal thing or just a Prince Zuko thing. It was the first time he’d seen that hairstyle.

He said as much. Minus the ridiculous bit. Hakoda could hold his tongue when it was important.

“Because, you know,” he gestured vaguely at his scar “—they had to shave off the left side. So I shaved off the other side. I just… kept it even after.” Hakoda had a feeling that it wasn’t the full story, that there was an actual meaning to it, but he wasn’t going to push just yet.

“Ah. To be honest, it looks ridiculous. Also, isn’t it a little high maintenance?” Never mind on the tongue holding. 

“It isn’t ridiculous,” he exclaimed. “It represents my honor.”

“Honor. Forgive me for asking, but is that a Fire Nation thing or a _you_ thing? I mean, you literally fought me over implying you’re dishonored.”

“Both. It’s an important value in the Fire Nation, doubly so in my case. I didn’t expect honor to not be universal among all nations. What do you value then, Water Tribe? Fish?”

For the record, Hakoda kept talking about the fish because the Prince never seemed to pick up on anything. Somehow.

Secondly, it may have been unintentional on the Prince’s part, but _damn_ , that statement hurt.

“We aren’t as uptight about honor as you a—” Hakoda had to stop himself from breaking his own rule. “—you people, but that’s because honor isn’t worth anything if you don’t survive at the end of the day.”

“Survival doesn’t mean piracy! You and your fleet don’t even have the decency to put up a proper fight. If you’re going to leave our troops to _drown_ , at least let them know!”

“It’s not like your country abides by any code of honor, either. Half of Amaruq’s village is destroyed, and a quarter of what’s left are war children! My village has no waterbenders left, save for Katara! You’ve said that you’ve seen it. That’s just the effects on my village and the neighbor’s. We’re doing all that we can to survive. I don’t think _you_ understand that!”

“Your village is poor because it hasn’t seen _progress_ yet! Your culture’s backwards attitudes and lack of education are what holds it back! If you would just surrender—”

Hakoda had enough. “And then what? And then the Firelord, _your father_ , would just leave us alone? How the hell do you not understand that we’d be dead if we just surrendered? The Southern Water Tribe wouldn’t exist anymore. You’d suck our traditions dry like you did our benders, and you have the audacity to tell me that’s a good thing? _Your Majesty_ , I am Chief. I can tell you that I’ve seen more savagery from your countrymen than from mine.”

This was, surprisingly, the most civil Cultural Exchange he’s ever had. Then again, the only other instances were: an Earth Kingdom demonstration of social structures, courtesy of their Council of Five; and Fire Nation fighting styles and cultural values, introduced by the Fire Navy, especially the force that raided his village until barely anything was left. With the latter, Hakoda was especially pleased to introduce Water Tribe tactics to return the gesture.

This was different. Sure, they were screaming and raving at each other and there was hardly any respect, but they were on equal footing. Who would’ve thought that the first _Cultural Exchange_ where he wasn’t shoved downwards was with the Fire Nation’s Crown Prince. 

It was… interesting. The way he was knocked down was more of a brawl than a kowtow pressed upon him by a hand on his neck.

“—just like Yu Dao!” Ah, the Prince was arguing that the colonies were more prosperous than the most backwoods portions of the Earth Kingdom. 

There was a glaring hole in that argument. 

Hakoda pointed it out. “Are they really Fire Nation? How many traditions were sacrificed on the altar for your so-called progress? You’re ignoring my entire point on my people’s culture, and my people’s wellbeing. They cannot be _your people_ and _safe_. Your grandfather ordered those raids. _Those raids_ killed Kya, Katara’s mom. You have no right to disrespect my people like that!”

There was no response.

—————

They made up. Not with words, no. Hakoda was a warrior by every definition of the word, and he refused to apologize for defending his people. Prince Zuko was, well, a Prince. Probably too prideful to apologize to anyone deemed lesser, and Crown Princes had no equals.

So, no apologies were spoken.

They fell back into their familiar rhythm while doing Hakoda’s _favorite_ activity: fishing. A fact that Hakoda learned over the past few days was firebenders needed to refuel frequently. So there they were. Fishing.

Well, the Prince’s attempts were nominally fishing.

Prince Zuko would stare into the clear water with the knife, stand up, hand the knife to Hakoda, wave a fire dagger around while working himself up into a frenzy, snatch the knife back, then crouch over the edge and repeat the whole process.

Hakoda didn’t know why he even bothered.

Just his luck, a octo-pufferfish approached their raft. The Prince made a move, as if to stab it in the tentacle. It would’ve hit.

Hakoda had to nudge the Prince’s hand away. He didn’t let himself feel bad. Octo-puffers were apparently bad luck for a first catch in the Earth Kingdom, from what he heard.

The reaction was predictable. “What’d you do that for! I was about to catch it!”

“Octo-pufferfish are a delicacy because they’re poisonous. We are making it out of this raft alive.”

“I could’ve prepared it! I’ve had octo-pufferfish before,” the Prince spluttered. 

“...By palace chefs. No offense, but I wouldn’t even trust myself with that, much less you.”

Reluctant agreement from the Prince there.

Since neither of them were currently fishing, Hakoda fixed that. 

“Knife.”

He’d been indulging the Prince’s pathetic fishing attempts for a few days, even when they would’ve gotten food had Hakoda held the knife. But in the face of the Prince trying to catch _that_ , Hakoda decided to finally push.

Maybe it was because their stomachs were grumbling, and maybe because it was the first time someone was so fixated on fishing properly, but the reasons didn’t matter.

The point was that Hakoda finally asked about his acquaintance’s insistence on fishing when Hakoda was right there.

“Aren’t I supposed to be pulling my own weight? I can’t do that with you _babying_ me with fishing. If I try hard enough, I’ll be able to pull it off perfectly.”

Well.

It wasn’t Solstice, but Hakoda had a lot to unpack from that response.

“You’re pulling your own weight. I don’t tolerate brats, but you aren’t being one when you don’t talk your Fire Nation propaganda at me. Your chores are to boil our water and to cook fish. Every crew needs a chores division.”

How was this his life. He was reassuring the Prince of the Fire Nation that he wasn’t useless. This was his life.

“What if you were asleep and a fish was right there?”

Hakoda didn’t bother answering that hypothetical.

“I fish enough for both of us. You don’t have to.”

And that was that. For now. 

He really needed to stop projecting Sokka unto this boy. It didn't matter that he was just as bright-eyed and eager to please, Hakoda just needed to get out alive. He wasn't supposed to be thinking about this, they were acquaintances.

So he didn't. And he didn’t clasp the boy’s arm. Because the boy wasn’t Sokka.

—————

La was slapping their raft. Were Hakoda’s prayers not enough? Helping nothing were Prince Zuko’s observations. With their combined luck, it would goad La into slapping them even more for the entertainment.

“Agni dammit, the raft’s so flimsy!”

“Why the FUCK did the rain come out of nowhere? That’s not how rain works!”

“I fucking swear. I GET A FISH HANDED TO ME BY THE UNIVERSE, AND IT SMACKS ME IN THE HEAD BEFORE FALLING BACK INTO THE WATER!”

Yes. Hakoda was right there. Water was wet. A fish smacked the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. He was on a fragile raft during a storm. Grass was green.

If anyone decided to ask him—unlikely—he would’ve said that the boy needed less whinging and more hanging on. There was no one around to impress with that one handed grip anyway.

La decided to slap Hakoda with a fish as well. It was wet and miserable.

Just when things couldn’t get any worse...There was a big wave. That was definitely going to do more than make him wet and miserable.

The boy was slipping.

He was on the other side of the raft.

Hakoda did the only thing he could.

“Hang on, son!” 

The ponytail whipped to face him before being shoved into his neck by the storm.

Hakoda didn’t mean for that to slip out, but who could blame him? The Prince was so similar to Sokka, for all his differences.

Not that Hakoda knew, but La didn’t blame him. 

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop La from pushing Prince Zuko off the raft.

The boy was definitely _people_ to Hakoda now, and maybe someone whom Hakoda wanted to get to know better. He could swim, but Hakoda wasn’t taking his chances in a storm.

He dove into the deep.

—————

Alright, that was an exaggeration. The boy wasn’t sinking. He was doing his best. Not that it mattered much when the waves were as tall as standard Water Tribe boats, but he wasn’t exactly sinking either.

Hakoda hauled the boy up, hoping that the rain hid his embarrassment. After all, it was technically his fault for distracting the boy. And Hakoda called him “son”. He suspected that people generally didn’t call the Fire Prince “son”.

No matter. It was over. Well, the storm wasn’t, so the Prince went back to cussing it out like a sailor. This time, an occasional jet of flame left his mouth. It seemed to warm him up, so Hakoda just let him be.

Hakoda felt inclined to join in the yelling. It destroyed the tentative rapport he built up with his acquaintance. There was no taking back calling someone “son”.

It was only the last dregs of his respect that stopped him from cussing out the spirits with the Prince.

Out loud, anyway.

————– 

It was as if calling Prince Zuko “son” once opened the floodgates.

He actually thanked Hakoda. With a bow and everything. What was vaguely concerning was the way he said “Sir”. He sounded like a man possessed by one of Hakoda’s crewmembers with that amount of reverence.

Which.

Okay. Hakoda could get used to this. 

Who would’ve thought that the best way for the Water Tribes to gain respect was to be stuck on a raft with an enemy Prince, attempt to push said Prince off the raft, and then get in a storm and save said Prince’s life after he fell off the raft? Not Hakoda. Definitely not Hakoda. 

He would’ve skipped the unpleasant beginning if he knew that was all it took.

And it was with that comforting thought that he started paddling away again. 

The ocean did not assist that night.

————–

_“—fuck’s sake, Hakoda. Can’t you keep your liquor down?”_

_Well, he should’ve been able to. Something was wrong._

_Down._

_Hakoda was sluggish. Damn it, couldn’t his legs just move? Someone was calling out for their father. He had to help!_

_Down._

_He couldn’t move._

_Down._

Oh. His leg was numb. That was what he got for sleeping on his side. It was either that or getting an awful crick in his neck. 

Hakoda would take the leg for a barrel of seaprunes, thank you very much.

Well, that was a bad dream.

But _La_ , Hakoda couldn’t fall back asleep. And so he was once again regaled with the unnatural image of his royal acquaintance begging.

Damn it. Hakoda had no right. It would’ve been blatant disrespect if he kept his eyes open like some sort of voyeur. _But he’d already called the boy “son”, didn’t he? Was there even any professionalism left in their relationship?_

Yes, no, and no to what he wanted to do. He couldn’t do that. At best case, it would be a conflict of interest. At worst case, Hakoda didn’t even know what the worst case was.

Besides. Whatever respect he might gain for the Prince if he learned about what kind of hardship that determined kid went through to get him cowering like that wasn’t worth losing the boy’s respect for him. And he’d just earned it, too.

With the fun activity of thinking, Hakoda closed his eyes. It was the least he could do.

—————

Hakoda woke to the sight of Prince Zuko, crouched, handing him the knife. Did he finally leave fishing to Hakoda?

“I know that I don’t need to. But, uh, I tried anyway. Didn’t work.” 

So no, then.

Hakoda sighed, and took the knife from the skittish teen. 

Come on, fish.

—————

Hakoda was a curious man, alright. He’d never seen firebending done without flames before ending up on this raft.

And now here he was, having steamed fish and boiled water all the time. Except for the one time they had seaweed. That was roasted.

So, he asked. _Say it’s for tactical reasons_ , Hakoda’s brain told him to say. 

_The Prince is a patriot_. The other half of Hakoda’s brain reminded him.

He just asked. Prince Zuko was used to this, if his face was any indication.

“My uncle does it all the time to heat tea. It’s a cantrip.”

“Doesn’t that take incredible control? I’ve never seen firebending used that way before.”

Honestly, it looked like _airbending_. Or what airbending probably looked like. It had none of the harsh strikes that firebending had, and it seemed to involve the air currents in some way. Close enough.

“Yes it does. I think it’s why I’m banned from making tea. Cook chased me out with two woks the one time I tried. Uncle had to bail me out."

Two woks. Okay. Hakoda knew better than to ask what exactly Prince Zuko did. He had his limits.

—————

“You are not singing the fucking hedgehog song!”

“But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all!”

Sue him. Hakoda was bored. This may have been at the expense of his dignity, but he was bored.

“Ugh! My uncle did enough of that! He has no taste in music!”

_La_ , Prince Zuko was a boy.

Hakoda didn’t want to think about that, so he stopped.

He went back to the hedgehog song.

(Unbeknownst to both of them, the good catch a few moments later was due to an incident of fishkill in a two meter radius around the raft. If either of them knew, they would’ve blamed the other.)

—————

“Chief Hakoda?” Something was wrong.

“How do you command respect?” Something was very wrong.

Prince Zuko was asking him a question. _Prince Zuko_ was asking him a question. Prince Zuko was asking _him_ about respect. Prince Zuko asked him the way a five year old who knew nothing did, slight quiver towards the end and all.

For the matter, why was he asking about this in particular? He was the Crown Prince. Didn’t he get lessons to prepare him for his three year voyage?

“In the Water Tribes, respect is based on rank and understanding. I don’t know how you’d do it in the Fire Nation, and I think at this point we know better than to assume about other cultures.” Hakoda didn’t want to provide information just to be kicked in the face with it. “But, we do it based on the idea that we must all respect each other. A leader can and should be overruled by his warriors should he fail to provide the crew with the proper respect. Your tribe is your family, so you bond with your crew, you eat with your crew, and you always fight with your crew. Lately, our numbers have diminished, so the Akhlut has recruited some members who aren’t tribe. But they’re still crew. It’s just a more professional form of respect even when they’re friends.”

“What do you do when there’s a mutiny?” When. That was concerning. Did they really not prepare the _Crown Prince_ for command?

“Ideally, there isn’t a mutiny. As I’ve said, for us, your crewmates are tribe, and you don’t throw out family. But there may be grievances sometimes, so they demand a meeting and you all sit and talk together.”

“It doesn’t help that they hate me. They only give their due when my uncle’s around to remind them of their place. They think that I’m just a child.” Ah. The Fire Nation probably equated respect with fear. Well, that burned the enjoyment out of the respect he got.

Hakoda was one step closer to _thinking about things_. All the pieces were in front of him. But Hakoda had no right. Without explicit proof, men did not simply interfere in another family’s matter. Hakoda had no right, even as Chief of his Tribe. He had even less of a right with the Prince of the Fire Nation, who held his head high and spat poison as dogma.

So he didn’t.

The crew respected his uncle. That might be an obstacle to what Hakoda was going to say. Nevermind how Prince Zuko seems to present a silly old man in front of Hakoda as his uncle.

_Make no assumptions_ , he reminded himself.

“You said your crew respects your uncle. How does your uncle interact with the crew?”

“He plays pai sho with them, and teases them when they lose horribly because it’s their fault for playing against him; he extends their breaks when we really have to get going; he makes them carry all the stupid fucking junk that he buys every single time we stop at a port—” Prince Zuko made as if to continue, but Hakoda held out a hand in front of him. The universal gesture for wait.

“Sir—” Hakoda didn’t need a reminder of what had to be fixed, thank you very much.

“From my understanding, he bonded with the crew. Is that correct?” The boy nodded. “I think you’ll find that crews tend to be more loyal when they have a connection with their commanders that’s something other than fear. Maybe try talking to them some more. One thing I know to avoid is to insult them and treat them like trash. Commanding’s hard, but I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it, s–” Hakoda bit his tongue. It wasn’t like the boy was Tribe. The boy was the exact opposite of Tribe _for La’s sake_.

“What do you mean, ‘I’ll get the hang of it’? I’ve been doing it for three years!”

“You’ve been taught wrong. It’s perfectly understandable that you didn’t get it right because whoever taught you to run a ship by, presumably, yelling at them is horribly wrong.”

One last argument. Before Prince Zuko could get another word in. His uncle seemed to be a good example to cite. He respected his uncle, proper respect and not the wrong one.

“Your uncle isn’t using fear. He plays pai sho with your crew, as you’ve said. And he seems to be doing a good job at being respected by the crew.” 

Prince Zuko nodded. Hakoda hoped that was an admission that Hakoda was right.

They stared at each other for a while.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

—————

Hakoda wasn’t used to too much silence. There was always conversation on the Akhlut, whether it was complaining about laundry or the six hundredth retelling of the Piercing Incident, _stop it Bato_. And back home, there were two rowdy children. _They were teenagers now_ , Hakoda thought.

Wasn’t that a sobering thought. And he wasn’t even drunk.

He should’ve thought that when he was hungover. Then he wouldn’t have had to sit through yelling with a literal headache. It would’ve just been metaphorical. But then he would’ve wanted to be drunk.

It was a good thing time moved forward, Hakoda settled.

—————

“That cloud’s fluffy.”

“Yep.”

“...”

“Do you think airbending can make clouds fluffy?”

“I… don’t know.”

—————

“We’ve been doing this for five days.”

“I know, Prince Zuko.”

“It hasn’t gotten less awkward.”

“I know, Prince Zuko.”

“My uncle’s the only other person who calls me that.”

“Does your uncle have a monopoly on calling you that, _Your Highness_?”

“...No.”

Hakoda sighed, closed his eyes, and did his _business_ over his side of the raft. For lack of a better phrase.

—————

“Do you think the spirits are laughing at us?”

“I wouldn’t know, son.”

“I think they are. They’ve laughed at me before, though uncle insisted they were laughing at something else.”

“You’ve seen spirits?”

“About two years ago, when we arrived at a town, the locals were talking about a ‘spiritual presence’. I thought it could be the Avatar. I went with a search party into the nearby swamp…”

“—a slimy vine was crawling up my leg. I thought it was a leech, so I started asking—”

—————

“—Anyway, that’s why I think they are. I don’t really see what’s funny about this.”

“Just think about it. The Chief of the Southern Water Tribes and the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation end up stranded on a raft. I have no idea what the punchline is, though.”

“It isn’t funny. I was so close to capturing the Avatar, and then I lost both him and the ship.”

Hakoda hummed.

“No, it really isn’t. Jokes aren’t funny when you don’t know the punchline.”

—————

They were having story time.

“—and then they scammed me out of my theater scrolls!”

What was Hakoda supposed to say to that? If Prince Zuko saw foxes gambling, they were probably spirits and he shouldn’t have played with them? Didn’t he have an uncle to tell him those basic morals?

“After that, the next sighting was allegedly in a dark cave…”

“—Helmsman Kyo now donates fifteen shiny pebbles every month, but the spirit was generous enough to accept it in bulk installments. We go there every year.”

—————

“I told you it was a long story.”

“I didn’t think that it would be that long.”

“I was chasing the Avatar! What did you think would happen?”

_A whole lot of nothing_ , Hakoda didn’t answer. 

—————

It was Hakoda’s turn.

“—A general proceeded to pour water on a rock. As expected, the rock wasn’t damaged by this. That was the second strangest assertion of dominance I have ever seen from other nations.”

“What’s the first?”

Hakoda did not answer. An image of a fish clumsily dodging fire blasts entered his mind, whether he liked it or not.

Prince Zuko was the opposite of a mind reader. This meant that he never got an answer.

—————

“—Bato was separated from us because he was burned during a raid we were on.”

“That’s rough?”

Hakoda could not believe the sincerity that poured off of the boy as much as his awkwardness did. It was too painful to look at. So he didn’t.

Alright, story time was over now.

—————

“Do you know any good stories?”

“Didn’t we just have story time?”

“Yes, and I can’t believe you supplied me with that much blackmail on General Iroh. Especially about the time he left his tea set at Engineering.” Prince Zuko looked horrified, probably worried about “betraying his nation”. “That was a joke. I meant if you know any good tales.”

“There’s this play called Love Amongst the Dragons. The Ember Island Players butchered it every year, but the base plot’s good.”

“Tell me more.”

_Yes Chief Hakoda sir_ , Prince Zuko said with the lilt of a mutinous man who found it fun, and there Hakoda sat.

Until sundown.

Prince Zuko began at roughly mid-afternoon.

—————

It was over dinner of roasted seaweed and steamed panda-moon jelly that the topic of how they got there was finally broached. Hopefully, having this talk after meditation was going to at least make it easier.

“It was storming. Your fleet raided our ship, and you seemed fairly drunk? Then Jee was yelling and Uncle was actually throwing fire and lightning. Two of your crew members boomeranged me at the same time—which is really unfair because I still have no idea how _that thing works_ —so I fell off. I grabbed on to the raft and there you were. My ship sailed in the wrong direction after that. Your turn,” Prince Zuko prompted.

“We were sailing towards Harbor Town to restock on supplies when we spotted your ship in the storm. Normally, we don’t plan raids on a whim, but it looked dilapidated and understaffed in addition to being small for a Fire Navy ship. I took a swig for the ritual and gave the command before you and your uncle were spotted. Your uncle redirected lightning at my boomerang, and made it hit a railing and snap. A crewman unfortunately disarmed me when I made a valiant effort to stab them. I then lost the fight against gravity, regained my bearing by doing a roll, which was when another crewman seized the opportunity to take me out. I struggled against La’s movements until the raft drifted nearby, and I climbed aboard. I mistook you for a fellow tribesman and invited you on. As you remember, I blacked out after that.”

Oh fuck. The Prince’s lack of storytelling skill was rubbing off on him. Luckily, the conversation kept going, and Hakoda didn’t have to shame the Tribe’s proud oral tradition further.

“Why’d you raid our ship? I tried to ask you the day after but… I didn’t notice you were hungover.”

“Your ship looked like a plausible target for hijacking, and once we saw you and your uncle aboard we planned to use both of you as leverage. We don’t take prisoners for long, but we would have either held you for ransom or turned you both over to the Earth Kingdom.”

“You thought you could take on my Uncle?” Prince Zuko was incredulous. His statement said _here is the fact and how did you not understand that the sun rises—_

Hakoda ignored that.

“We had the advantage of surprise and maneuverability. So yes, we did proceed knowing that the Dragon of the West is on that ship.”

“You wouldn’t have succeeded.”

“What? We’ve been over how your whole Fire Nation superiority is false, and we do have enough victories against your navy.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about! You wouldn’t have gotten anything if you held me for ransom, and my uncle would’ve broken out of whatever you put him in!” 

“And why not?” Hakoda had two questions that just so happened to sound the same.

“You know. He’s the Dragon of the West. And he would’ve burned down your ship if you didn’t have good tea.”

That was the lower one on the priority list.

“Why wouldn’t we have gotten anything if we held you for ransom?”

“The Firelord would expect me to escape on my own. He knows how to be strategic, and he wouldn’t give you money because you’re the enemy. I was telling you this while you were hungover...” He trailed off. _Tui and La_ , the Firelord was a father. Getting his son back wasn’t strategic? 

Apparently, because the Prince’s mood was “deconstruct all of Hakoda’s reasons”, the conversation continued.

“My ship is the only one of its kind, and you would’ve repeatedly been visited by Zhao. You wouldn’t have been able to infiltrate anything with it.”

Having now received a rough explanation on Zhao and the man’s repeated interference and petty rivalry with the other, he was now convinced that there would have been more cons than pros to capturing Prince Zuko’s ship. In addition to the actual point made.

One last question. It was bothering him, a really annoying glacier in the back of his head.

“Why did you end up with a mutinous crew and your uncle on a quest to capture the Avatar?”

—————

Prince Zuko did not react well to that.

“Capturing the Avatar is the only way to restore my honor.” Serious and irate, his response made him every bit the Prince he was.

Now, Hakoda knew that he _pushed_ , even when he wasn’t supposed to. Well, this was one of the times when he technically wasn’t supposed to, but it couldn’t have been worse than debating the Prince of the Fire Nation over cultural genocide.

“Why do you need to restore your honor in the first place? Aren’t you a prince?”

The boy muttered something under his breath. Hakoda asked him to clarify.

He blew up.

“I’M BANISHED, OKAY?”

He took a breath.

“I’m banished from the Fire Nation and its colonies.” His voice a halting whisper, as though he was trying to convince Hakoda of something he didn’t believe himself. “Condemned to chase a _spirit tale_ for three years. And then everything changed when your village actually harbored the Avatar.”

Three years. The burn scar on his face was about the same age. The Prince looked roughly Sokka’s age. Hakoda didn’t ask, and he didn’t like the answer.

That other rumor couldn’t actually be true. He’d only heard about it in the seediest taverns, where everyone was having a crap drink and a tale of having a Fire Nation soldier’s head on a pike of all things decorating their homes. 

He couldn’t. Hakoda needed proof.

What kind of father would allow their own son to be banished?

But who could burn a prince? A Crown Prince?

—————

_There was a scaled… thing in front of him, and it was smiling._

_Hakoda vaguely recognized it as a dragon from the occasional decor on raided pirate ships they sunk in revenge for stealing from their Tribes._

_No matter. It firmly rested its claw on his shoulder. One wrong move and—_

_Left._

_Hakoda was back on the Akhlut._

_Aake was advancing towards him. Why was Aake towering over him, crew didn’t tower—  
He felt like he was smaller, somehow. _

_Ranalok was with him, ever supportive as always._

_Aake took another step forward. Why was his heart racing? Why was he freezing up? Aake was the reason they had a rule of Not Telling after they drank._

_Hakoda’s brain knew that Aake was not that tall. Ranalok was not that tall either._

_Aake was leaning down and why was he leaning down Hakoda looked down at his boots and they were pointy._

_Aake’s hand was cold as he brought Hakoda’s chin up to force eye contact._

_Their eyes were cold._

_Hakoda didn’t remember when he’d backed up and clambered on the railing in an awkward crouch._

_“This isn’t the first time we’ve done this. Hopefully it’s the last”, said not-Aake._

_And he was shoved—_

—————

_Down._

It was night. A spirit probably sent him dreams. That probably explained why his dreams felt like they meant something.

He looked to his left. Might as well try to catch something. Again. Maybe nocturnal fish were tastier, who knew?

“Father,” Prince Zuko pleaded.

But there still wasn’t enough proof. _Make no assumptions._ Hakoda wanted to do something, he was sure that the spirit wanted him to do something, and at this point the only party that probably didn’t want Hakoda to do something was Prince Zuko himself.

So he couldn’t. Well, he shouldn’t. But men did what they shouldn’t in the face of horrors.

And he hated having to metaphorically come at the problem like a rock, but it would probably hurt the boy more if Hakoda just kept on needling, inching deeper and deeper without warning or relenting. Quicker to just rip off the bandage.

For the first time, Hakoda touched Prince Zuko.

Just one, feather-light touch. On the shoulder. To wake him up.

Hakoda tried to be tender, he really did. He did it the same way he did to his children, after all. Not that it meant anything in the end. 

Because Prince Zuko _flinched_.

Hakoda sighed and sat vigil. He’d get the needed proof when the boy was actually awake.

—————

Hakoda thanked the spirits for small mercies. Prince Zuko didn’t remember what happened early morning.

He’d pieced it together, he wasn’t stupid thank you very much, but it was so hard to broach that. So he experienced his second dawn on the raft as the Prince stretched and greeted the sun with a knife to his scalp. His hair had been growing out over the last few days.

Prince Zuko fervently washed the knife before handing it over.

That was Hakoda’s cue. 

—————

“You’re staring. Stop it.” Hakoda didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t just avoid looking at half of someone’s face. Especially when he’d spent almost a week with them.

“I won’t ask.” The teen nodded and took a breath.

“I get it. The scar’s on my face. I can’t just ignore that.” Prince Zuko turned away, unscarred side facing Hakoda.

—————

Hakoda didn’t realize how much time they killed with conversation. But, well, you never realize how precious something is until it’s gone.

The silence was cloying. It was pushing without pulling, taking and giving neither respite nor comfort. It was as stiff as his companion and presumably the boy’s scar.

Hakoda hated it.

But he couldn’t. He’d broken his own rule practically fifty times over by pushing and pushing and pushing. He’d negotiated for acquaintances and attempted to gain familiarity with a Prince.

He wasn’t sure Prince Zuko agreed to any of it.

_There will be mutual respect for boundaries._

Hakoda would’ve barked out a loud laugh at that if he could. Well, this was his punishment detail, and he had to be man enough to deal with it.

He’d touched Prince Zuko, knowing what he did. He knew that the scar couldn’t have been a training accident, he knew that the scar first marked a thirteen year old, and he knew that he had issues with authority and respect.

He had no right.

The silence was its own arbiter.

—————

He missed Sokka’s rambling. He missed Katara’s bright smiles and impassioned speeches about adopting every single spirits-damned animal they found. 

He missed Kya, most of all.

And now he was all alone, with his one companion being the traumatized Crown Prince of the Fire Nation who was sitting silently on the other side of the raft.

He should’ve held on tighter.

But he couldn’t have.

All he could do was take a swig from the boot.

—————

He had to. Prince Zuko was so listless Hakoda wasn’t sure he would’ve noticed if he was slapped with a fish.

“Fish.”

Prince Zuko perked up and started smoking the fish.

————–

Splish splash. The water was lapping at their raft. 

Hakoda looked from the corner of his eye as Prince Zuko got some more to boil.

He really wanted to be drunk and bury his sorrow in shenanigans. But he couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair. He made this mistake, and he had to be brave enough to face the consequences.

He would sit there and deal with the silent raft.

The clouds were fluffy, with no one to speculate with.

—————

“Just spit it out! I know you have questions!”

Well, that was one way to start talking about it. But, well, Hakoda really shouldn’t. Not yet. He had one thing left to do.

“I’m sorry for not respecting your boundaries. Every man has a right to his past, and I disregarded that just because you’re Fire Nation.”

He handed his fish over.

Prince Zuko took it. 

That was good enough.

And with that gesture having been done, Hakoda began.

—————

Hakoda figured that Prince Zuko was only baring his soul reluctantly. This was why he didn’t exactly ask questions. He wasn’t even sure that the boy could verbalize anything right now. 

“You’re a prince.” A tight nod.

“It wasn’t a training accident.” Tighter.

“It’s shaped like a handprint.” _Yes._

Hakoda felt like he was interacting with a cornered animal. He couldn’t phrase it softly, but he could try.

“I’m going to ask one question, son. You don’t have to answer. You don’t have to nod or shake your head.” The boy seemed to understand. Hakoda continued on, and he knew he shouldn’t. 

“Was it your father?”

He tried. He tried to ask as softly and as gently as he could, and he immediately regretted it when Prince—no, not Prince when he wasn’t a Prince right now—when Zuko started trembling.

Zuko couldn’t lie to save his life. That applied to every single fiber of his being, and Hakoda had the _unique experience_ of witnessing a boy break down because his father hurt him.

And oh, he tried to say no. He really did. But Zuko’s face was just so expressive, it was like the whole deck was stacked against his dignity. Even his own face.

Hakoda was ashamed to be a part of that deck.

Hakoda finally had the proof he wanted, and he hated it.

—————

Hakoda was not a hateful man, but it was all he could feel at the moment. He hated himself, he hated the Fire Nation for forcing him to leave his family, and he hated the spirits for making him deal with this. He hoped in equal measure that they couldn’t read thoughts.

But most of all, he hated the Fire Nation, for calling his people savages while happily being subjugated by one.

Previously, he didn’t care how it ended, as long as it did with his family and Tribe safe. No longer.

He will behead the Firelord himself, for what the monster has done to his own family. But the Firelord, the one who held the mantle of flame and death and terror, was a man. And that made it so much worse. Monsters and malicious spirits simply were. Ozai twisted and contorted his fire into telling his own tales, where the power-hungry, blazing, _ashmaking scum_ claimed everything for the taking. He _chose_ this. He chose to surround himself with weapons and ashes instead of children. Instead of a home.

Hakoda bet that the Firelord slept well at night. The complete opposite of _his son_ , who Hakoda knew whimpered every night they were on that raft. The complete opposite of Hakoda himself, who couldn’t even fathom a man having children and yet not being a father. He hated it. He hated it with all his heart.

_For La's damn sake_ , Hakoda did a better job at parenting the _Fire Lord’s_ son than, apparently, anyone else. At the very least, he did the bare minimum in not leaving the boy to see himself as a tool, or expecting him to maintain a working ship without teaching him how to command. At the very least, he tried to convince Zuko to unlearn the hurtful propaganda that he was raised with, and he tried to get him to understand the right thing. With all he was taught, it was like they shoved smoke down Prince Zuko’s throat and expected him to breathe.

Apparently, his brain was too hung up on being a better parent to the Fire Prince than the Fire Lord that in ill-advised parental instinct, he held his arms out, inviting Zuko to a hug. In response, the boy stared at him like he was suddenly an Air Nomad.

He settled on gesturing for a shoulder pat.

Hakoda was denied, and Zuko chose to break down alone.

He saw that coming. That didn’t make it hurt any less. 

Hakoda sat on his side of the raft, fishing.

—————

They had to interact with each other at some point. He handed Zuko his fish, and he was met in the middle with Zuko handing Hakoda back his filled boot-cup.

Hakoda took a swig.

How much longer were they supposed to float on this raft? Until they died of malnutrition? Spirits preserve them.

Hakoda prayed without words. He wasn’t sure he could even form them if he wanted to. So instead he sent his feelings downward to the Ocean and tacked a plea on.

—————

La pushed their raft away from the spot where Hakoda just peed. This didn’t help with anything important.

He figured he was supposed to do everything important himself. Lucky him.

“Zuko. There’s a fish over there. Do you want to have a go at it?”

_Tui and La_ , this was painfully awkward. But what else was he supposed to do? There wasn’t much to do on the raft, and he doubted an offer to go cloud gazing would go over well.

“Yes,” Zuko whispered.

He still looked ashamed, like men had no right to cry. Hakoda was confused. Zuko should be mad at him for pushing, for Hakoda forcing him to open up without leading by example. 

He looked ashamed for acting this way in front of Hakoda. 

...Hakoda needed to stop comparing Zuko to his children. It probably wasn’t helping. Father was probably the worst thing someone could be right now.

He handed the knife over.

“Hopefully, the ocean will have mercy and give you a fish that isn’t poisonous. You got the stab move down, you just have to adjust to the fact that fish are slippery.”

Zuko’s total confusion at one singular compliment, as well as his sharp sarcasm would’ve been amusing any other time. Hakoda allowed himself a small smile. Maybe.

A slight snort in response. “And now the fish will be the most poisonous tuna-ray. Thanks.” The boy was still frowning, but his eyes were already scanning the water determinedly.

Yes.

—————

There was a tiny fish the size of Hakoda’s pinky. Right there on the knife. Caught by Zuko.

Oh, how far they’d come.

Zuko even made a move to open up. Willingly. Hakoda hoped that the kid considered him ‘safe’ at this point. There were some experiences that you went through with someone where you couldn’t _not_ end up close. 

“Hypothetically, what’s the punishment in the Water Tribes for disrespect?” 

In the back of his mind, Hakoda registered, the rasp was not unlike that of the occasional smoker they ran across. It felt like all the smooth edges had been roughened and raked over the coals for good measure. Hakoda stopped thinking about that. There was a more important thing to focus on, and answer.

“You didn’t do anything to deserve _that_ , Zuko.” 

“You didn’t answer my question.” Maybe Hakoda didn’t, but he answered the _something_ that was unsaid. It seemed like no one has so far. He was the first. 

Why was Hakoda the first in what seemed like everything related to being a Reasonable Adult?

Spirits. He’s _Sokka’s_ age. The Firelord was no father, and being a callous imperialist with no regard for other people’s lives was no excuse for poor parenting, given the way the boy talks about his uncle. Then again, apparently his Uncle left him lost and alone with only the vaguest proverbs for advice. Not necessarily the best example of fatherly guidance, now. Especially not when the _esteemed General_ seemed above giving his nephew assistance on being a captain, instead leaving Zuko yelling at everything, chasing ghosts with a crew that doesn't understand, doing so much mental gymnastics he could compete with that one acrobat friend he mentioned once. 

Maybe he also hated General Iroh, for hiding his viper jaws behind tea, bawdy jokes, and proverbs. Then again, Zuko was a bad judge of character. And stubborn. Maybe General Iroh tried to do more beyond being jovial? 

Hakoda threw out the benefit of the doubt for the General the second he reminded himself of Ba Sing Se.

Zuko looked impatient. It might have been because it was the second time he’d repeated the statement. “Just humor me.”

He did. _Tui_ , Hakoda did. He explained in depth how the Tribes viewed disrespect, the different history of their social customs, standard punishments by the Councils like ice floes… He was only paying half attention to his words. His unvoiced thoughts tasted like ash in his mouth, but by _La_ he did. Anything to keep those thoughts from making their way out.

Anything to keep his mind off of the boy knowing the smell of burning flesh, and the fact that he still wanted to crawl back to the one who did it to him.

It was all he could do, and Hakoda knew it wasn’t enough.

—————

Well, they’ve definitely reached the point of no return now. Sorry Katara, your dad’s a hypocrite. Exhibit A was over there, minding his own business.

Hakoda sighed. It didn’t even take a week. Now he had a firebender who couldn’t catch fish to save his life.

How was he going to explain this. La’s sake, Zuko chased his children and probably terrorized them. And now he was attached.

Hakoda sighed again. Maybe if he sighed enough, he could figure out what to do afterward.

—————

The continuing silence draped over the raft like a mantle. Or a blanket. It was the middle of the day.

Hakoda was parched.

“Zuko. Could you boil some more water?”

Was it pathetic for Hakoda to miss basic human interaction when he could literally just talk to the boy next to him? Maybe.

But in his defense, he was still mulling things over before something inevitably forced him to be more decisive. It wasn’t a usual problem, but if ‘Zuko is the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation’ wasn’t special circumstances, then nothing was.

Hakoda sat and patiently waited for water.

—————

“You’re not pitying me. I should say thanks for that, I guess.”

Huh. Hakoda got a thank you with his water. That was surprising. Zuko didn’t seem inclined to break the silence.

He raised his hand in front of his face because if he tried to answer now he would choke and possibly die because of the water he wanted so much, and no one wanted to hear a man trying to answer something while gulping water.

Once refreshed, Hakoda answered.

“I won’t pretend to understand your problems. And I didn’t think you’d appreciate pity, either. I should say ‘You’re welcome’ for that too.”

“I love my Uncle, I really do. But sometimes he gets that look in his eyes when I yell at him. Especially when we first visited the air temples. Like I’m just a weak child.”

Hm. Hakoda wasn’t there to witness, so he didn’t even know if it was pity or simple parental concern. He couldn’t say anything. 

So he didn’t.

“Don’t spill your water with all your gesturing.”

Zuko stiffened and gave him a look.

What? It was true. He was gesturing wildly. And if the teen was alright with wasting his water, Hakoda was going to claim the other boot-cup and chug out of both at the same time.

—————

“—How long has it been? I know I am far, but never forget me.”

“Almost a week, Zuko. Wait, is that from one of your theater scrolls?”

Zuko blushed. It was very awkward. The teen then defaulted into bristling.

“I know how long it’s been! I can keep track of the sunrise!”

Okay, but that didn’t answer why he was monologuing. Maybe he finally got to Hakoda’s level of boredom and decided the dignity wasn’t worth it anyway.

Hakoda was going to go with that.

—————

Hakoda couldn’t believe that it took him half a day to figure out how to deal with their dynamic change long-term. 

He just had to do the exact same thing he did the last time this happened: negotiate.

“We aren’t acquaintances anymore.”

In hindsight, that was the worst way to start.

Zuko—he was never going to be Prince Zuko to Hakoda now, there were some things you couldn’t undo—stared at him, managing to look completely accepting and baffled at the same time.

“You’d think it was obvious the second we were telling each other our sob stories.” Hakoda didn’t need this right now.

“Anyway. This means the old rules don’t exactly apply anymore. We’ll need to renegotiate.”

“Okay. I’m not hugging you.”

“Save that for the actual negotiations.”

—————

“The first thing we need to establish, is that neither of us have dignity on this raft.”

Zuko agreed. “Your shirt is torn up, and you smell.”

Hakoda didn’t like this agreement.

“The only reason it’s less obvious for you is because you cover it up with your campfire smell. Neither of us have taken a bath this entire time. Do I need to remind you about which one of us quotes theater scrolls?”

“It’s more dignified than the hedgehog song!”

They were getting off-topic. This was not conducive to having actual negotiations.

“The second thing I’d like to say, is that not having dignity doesn’t mean you don’t have boundaries. And that we need to establish those today.” A nod in response. Now Hakoda wanted enthusiastic agreement, and he didn’t get it. Oh well. 

“If I try to initiate contact that you’re uncomfortable with, you have every right to say no, Zuko. It’s Water Tribes custom to be more openly affectionate than what I’m sure you’re used to. I won’t proceed unless you say yes in a way that clearly isn’t forced. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think our chores division is fair?”

“Why are you asking me? Aren’t you heading negotiations right now?”

Hakoda sighed in every way except verbally. “Zuko. I know that I’m a father and a leader. But I want our remaining time on the raft to be more comfortable for both of us. We’re clearly beyond acquaintances at this point. It’s only fair to have you as an equal.”

Zuko blinked. “Okay. It’s fair. But I should get to fish when you’re asleep.”

“Water’s a scarcer resource. You should be boiling more of that while I’m asleep, but if that’s done you can. And vice versa?”

“Fine. Just tell me beforehand.”

“Alright. The next problem, how should we deal with nightmares? Ignoring the other person clearly doesn’t work.”

“It’s not ignoring if you give me space.” Okay. True. Hakoda could respect that.

“I’ll give you space. Alright. The previous rule of no slurs or insults still applies, that’s non-negotiable. As for questions. You’ve been tolerating my questions this whole time. Are they okay with you?”

“You ask them anyway! Just let me say no to all of your poking, I need to salvage something from my pride.”

Was. Was that a joke? About his pride?

“Okay. What if I let you poke at me?”

“Then you’d have less honor and dignity, exposing your whole past like that.”

“You literally relived your trauma right in front of me. You’re still the same. I don’t think honor works that way, no matter what you Fire Nation types say.”

“I think you just want to have conversations. With feelings.” Hakoda wasn’t going to deny that.

“And if I do?”

“And if I don’t?” Was this what having a teenager felt like?

“Then we have conversations. Without feelings, since apparently that’s what you want.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Hakoda changed his mind, he no longer wanted to have a teenager. Unfortunately, he had two, even if both of them were with the Avatar at the moment. And he might have another one right here. He wasn’t sure yet.

None of this was important, because they weren’t even done yet. Not yet, anyway.

“Do you have anything to add?”

“No. I’ll keep my meditation at night.”

“Okay. What is this now, friends?” Zuko stared at him when he said that. 

Zuko shrugged. He wasn’t saying anything. 

“Close acquaintances?”

No answer. 

Hakoda really had to figure everything out himself, huh? Well, he was out of his depth with this.

“Let’s shake on… whatever this is.”

And so they did. 

And if Hakoda made an extra move to clasp Zuko’s arm to do it fully Water Tribe style, he wasn’t denied.

—————

“—Since you don’t like conversations with feelings, I guess that means I can’t tell my jokes anymore.”

“I don’t care about that!”

Why. Hakoda did not sign up for this. Hakoda did not sign up for any of this. Spirits, just because he had children didn’t mean he knew how teenagers worked. 

“...This is the punchline.”

“What?”

“To the joke the spirits are playing on us.”

“ _What?_ ” Zuko was oblivious as always.

“The Fire Prince and Chief of the Southern Water Tribes end up stranded on a raft. The biggest problem is the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation being a teenager.”

“...It’s still not funny.”

Hakoda agreed. He’d drink to that if he had a drink, or an actual cup. As it was, he made a mockery of toasting the boot-cup with an exaggerated swig.

It was all he could do. He had no dignity.

—————

Zuko sat, as per usual, with a small flame in his palm. Was it just him, or did it look more yellow than before?

Either way, Hakoda sat close and breathed in the campfire smell. It was warm. And pleasant.

Soon enough, it was extinguished.

Hakoda looked up at the moon. _Tui_ , don’t spite his children. Please. 

He wouldn’t have had to pray as much if Katara got a master, but there was no use for what-ifs. He forced a calm to settle over him. 

Was that what meditation was?

...He didn’t understand it. It could go away now. No wonder Mom knew from the moment Hakoda was born that he wasn’t a bender. He doesn’t _get it_.

Maybe meditation was just a firebending thing. He’d leave Zuko to it tomorrow.

—————

_They were stopping at a port._

_Hakoda waved goodbye at his crewmates who were luckily his crewmates this time, and he got off._

_The shopkeeper gave him rare cactus juice, and then a lemur was on his face._

_Just a lemur._

_He scratched at the lemur to get off, but it was scratching him back. He was losing this scratching competition._

_Luckily, the lemur climbed down and did cartwheels far, far away._

_Left (?)_

_And then his children crash landed on him with a flying Fire Navy ship. Before he could tell them that children shouldn’t crush their fathers with Fire Navy ships, he noticed that Sokka was twice as tall as him._

_Rude._

_Hakoda wasn’t short._

_But then he was because a leaf pushed against his back, and he tripped._

_The leaf was also rude._

_Down._

—————

Hakoda was glad to wake up normally, at a reasonable hour, after the whole… yesterday.

Zuko kept up his disagreement with what a reasonable hour was. It was probably his duty as a firebender, so Hakoda let it go.

“Morning.” No, Hakoda didn't append the ‘good’. That was disrespectful to his nocturnal lifestyle.

“Morning, Chief Hakoda.”

Oh. He knew he forgot something.

“I’ve dropped your title. You can drop mine. Just call me Hakoda.”

“Morning, _Chief Hakoda sir_.”

Hakoda just needed to… take a few minutes to be not-awake again. Just until he could deal with things.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t go back to sleep. Not when he was hungry, and he was sure the firebender was as well.

He snatched the knife a little more slowly than he liked, and went about it.

—————

He was in one of those reflective moods again. Or maybe it was just the boredom. 

Either way, it had Hakoda laughing at a common phrase.

Zuko was confused, as he was. “What?”

“Place yourself in another man’s shoes, huh?” Hakoda’s gaze turned to his right, and the boy’s followed. They looked at their boot-cups, placed side by side because neither of them were drinking at the moment. They looked like a ridiculous matched set.

“I don’t think either of us were able to do that.”

“No, I don’t think so. But, ‘drink out of another man’s boot’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

“Don’t underestimate my uncle. He makes proverbs out of everything.”

And that was how they ended up talking about General Iroh for… actually Hakoda couldn’t remember. But it was a long time.

—————

“My uncle is obsessed with tea. Sometimes he even combines it with proverbs, like, ‘ginseng tea is best served before bed’.” 

It took all of Hakoda’s willpower to avoid chuckling. He would not sacrifice his dignity on laughing at Zuko’s innocence of his uncle’s sex advice.

He didn’t have any left to give, anyway.

—————

At some point, the conversation had moved on from proverbs, but they were still talking about General Iroh. Somehow. 

And so Hakoda was eating a fish to the rhythm of Zuko’s amateur ramblings about his uncle. Right. The famed Dragon of the West who besieged Ba Sing Se and left ashes in place of homes and families in his wake. The Firelord’s _brother_.

And here was his nephew, talking about how he was notorious for being a womanizer, just a little while after apologizing for bringing up a joke about _burning Ba Sing Se down_.

From what Hakoda had heard, General Iroh was a womanizer. That was true. But Zuko was still a horrible judge of character, and this didn’t change that fact.

_La’s sake_ , until recently he still seemed to have a misguided sense of loyalty to the Firelord.

But as Zuko kept talking about how his Uncle kept serving tea to ‘every single _fucking person on the crappy ship all the time_ ’, Hakoda had a bad feeling that he had to return this nephew to his Uncle.

He wasn’t going to pray for mercy. He was going to face this properly. And to do that, Hakoda would listen in for two reasons: Zuko could vouch for him better if he was a good listener, and Zuko had really good blackmail on his Uncle being embarrassing and human.

—————

Hakoda could feel yet another headache coming on, as well as a deep sigh at what his Problem had become.

Said Problem somehow ended up on a long-winded rant about how his Uncle had taken him to see a bad play. There was no stopping him. Unfortunately, Hakoda really needed water, and all that pacing and arm flailing wasn’t helpful for boiling water.

Before he could stop himself, Hakoda poked Zuko’s shoulder in an attempt to point out the lack of water. 

Zuko didn’t flinch. In fact, he awkwardly poked Hakoda back before he got the point.

Progress. Hakoda was making progress with things, and he was proud of it.

Who knew the way to conquer the Fire Nation was to get stranded on a raft with its Crown Prince?

Not Hakoda, but he was going to make sure that when the war ended with this teen on the throne, that he’d be decent and accepting of Water Tribe Customs and Culture, including touch. Definitely including touch.

—————

The sun was gently shining down on the Wani as it rose, softly rousing the firebenders on board. Iroh hated it.

The sun was exactly the same, and it had no right. It had no right to carry on as if everything was exactly the same.

(Somewhere without the Walls of Ba Sing Se, it played the exact same trick.)

He disliked tea nowadays. Tea was all water, and all water was the same.

(Iroh wondered if air would take something from him next. All the other elements have. He wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Balance was important, after all.)

(The crew almost had to hold him down and shove a cup of water down his throat. It had only been a week, General Iroh.)

There were things unsaid, words between the long, angry shouting matches (a desperate prayer from an equally desperate man), or moods that explained what men never would. (There were no proverbs.)

(There must have been something more to the Prince’s banishment that the General wasn’t telling them, else Iroh wouldn’t have insisted the crew get along with him, but whispers in the wind never told stories.)

( _How could they, they never learned how to carry weight. They were too scattered when it hit. They were too scattered to s c r e a m—_ )

And now his (son, the boy never knew he could’ve had a father who was right there _Damn you Ozai, you stole this from him_ ) nephew was gone. Disrespected twice by his Lord and his men, and likely yet another time by the savage leader as he drowned in the deep.

(And yet.) 

The ocean was vast, and perhaps they missed something.

(And yet.)

Zuko was (is) a stubborn boy. If anyone could survive a raft with a savage chief, it was him.

(And yet.)

He let his nephew search for the Avatar because it gave him hope. (Would he be a hypocrite if he claimed hope was wasted on the weary?) 

(And. Yet.)

The General showed his resemblance to his nephew, all raging fire and steel against what can never be done.

(And yet.) 

(But the Prince found the Avatar, didn’t he?)

And yet.

The Wani sailed on.

—————

“...And then the ocean said, ‘At _shore_ pleasure’!” Hakoda felt offended, on behalf of himself, at the distinct lack of laughter coming from Zuko. 

“My uncle tells me this one all the time.”

“What is it?”

“How long does it take to brew tea?” The General sure did love his tea jokes. They were no match for his top-notch wit, but Hakoda would humor Zuko’s attempts at comedy.

“Oolong time?” Hakoda guessed.

Zuko chuckled. “Yep.”

“Do you have any other jokes?” Hakoda needed to know what he was facing to successfully implement Operation: Teach Zuko The Art of The Joke.

“Well, there’s my uncle’s favorite joke, but I only remember the punchline. It’s ‘ _leaf_ me alone, I’m _bushed_ ’.”

Operation: Teach Zuko The Art of The Joke was looking to be Hakoda’s toughest one yet. Yes, even compared to Operation: Clean Water.

—————

Zuko didn’t have the mind for puns. Hakoda wasn’t _salty_ about that.

He tried sarcasm next.

“Oh Great and Wise One, tell me about how you invented sarcasm and deliberately didn’t tell the Fire Nation for this very moment to happen.”

Hakoda was pleased to say that the kid had a knack for it.

“Well Prince Zuko, it started when everything was fine and on fire. Because everything was completely fine, the Fire Nation didn’t ask to be educated in the art of sarcasm.”

“And then maybe, if you were sarcastic at the Navy they would’ve all retired and gone home.”

Okay. Hakoda was maybe biting off more than he could chew. It might’ve been his fault because he said there were no limits.

“How… biting,” Hakoda responded.

“Of course it is!”

Did Hakoda forget to tell him they were having a sarcasm-off?

Guess he did. 

Time to start another round. Hakoda would make a master of him yet. He had time.

—————

There was a trail of smoke in the distance. Hakoda would hope for rescue, but he knew better. The Fire Nation didn’t seem to believe in naval hospitality or spirits anymore, after all.

Zuko seemed to believe otherwise, because when the smoke went from being nigh-perceptible wisps to massive raincloud size, he set his hands on fire.

Hakoda would’ve chided him for burning their fish, but the approaching ship did look familiar.

And now Zuko was shooting fireballs into the sky to signal his rust bucket to pick him up. Hakoda still wasn’t putting his hopes up, but it would be nice if they practiced hospitality. It would be really nice.

A crew member from the ship lowered a rope down to their raft. Zuko handed it to him.

Hakoda knew there were eyes on him, but he couldn’t pin down the source of his discomfort until he turned around and saw General Iroh smiling blandly at him.

“Hello, Chief Hakoda. I hope you can appreciate our humble hospitality until the next port. It doesn’t do well to disobey the spirits.”

What were the steps to approaching a mother polar bear goose again?

_One._ Avoid when possible.

Well that wasn’t helpful.

_Two._ No sudden movements.

Shit. Fuck. _Fuckshit._ Hakoda already did that when he whirled around.

_Three._ Be prepared to run at a moment's notice.

“Hello, General Iroh. Thank you for your generous offer of hospitality. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you too much. Where is the nearest port?”

“The nearest port is a few days away. Do rest. I am sure your journey was tiring.”

_Fuck._ Hakoda was not going to owe the Dragon of the West. That was not in any of his plans.

Well. Too late now. The least he could do was take advantage.

—————

The General invited him into his quarters.

“Thank you for returning my nephew safe and sound. I was very worried this entire week. I didn’t think Prince Zuko would be able to tell me what happened until I would have joined him in the Spirit World.”

The General’s smile was a papercut. 

“We’re on opposite sides of the war, General Iroh. But I think an exception can be made for your nephew. I wouldn’t have hurt my Tribe’s only hope for peace after The War.”

“Thank you for your concern, Chief Hakoda. However, you must know that foreign meddling in one nation’s affairs rarely ends well.”

And there it was. The dragon claiming his hoard. Of course the General wasn't talking about foreign affairs. Hakoda didn’t exactly want to leave Zuko here with his possessive uncle, but he had to. And Zuko technically never belonged to him in the first place, anyway. 

“Now that it’s settled, I believe you promised to give me the details on the next port, as well as letting me send a message to my fleet.”

“Of course, Chief Hakoda. We wouldn’t keep you here for too long.”

—————

Hakoda was hungover on the Akhlut. Hopefully he didn’t throw up those seaprunes.

They definitely had fun, last night. It was a celebration of both a victory and a reunion, and Hakoda wouldn’t have it any other way.

And he’d even gained a new perspective on what his children were up to during storytelling. He was not a happy camper. Two. His children were at two volcanoes. While they were erupting. One was bad enough. 

Hakoda sighed and hoped that Bato was embellishing something. His _headache_ was gone but his headache still wasn’t gone. Teenagers. Hakoda made a mental note to apologize to his Mom when he got back from the War for all of his teenage shenanigans. Eventually.

He looked at the horizon, calm and slow and steady, and approached a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> The whole boot thing was literally the result of me looking up desalination and replacing bowls from the WikiHow thing with boots... because what other containers do they have... (No, Zuko wouldn't give up his knife sheath or anything. He's still using that.)
> 
> Besides all of the above from Muffinlance, I also took the meditation thing, the one-sided storytelling narrative device, and the differing funeral practices from Salvage, also by Muffinlance. Polar bear goose is also from Muffinlance, but a lot of the random other creatures that are literally relevant for .2 seconds are mine. The entire plot was basically from the above tumblr post, which actually inspired me to include the attempted murder. I took a lot of inspiration from ZenzaNightwing's writing style with Iroh's/Wani interlude as well as all of the dream sequences. I took the hedgehog song from Emletish (I think it was in either the Stalking Zuko series or the Worst Prisoner). Yu Dao's existence and Zuko's "I drowned at three" were taken from the comics. That being said you can completely ignore the comics if you want because I just took random details. (Uh, I think the Wani's name was originally from Embers but I found it through Muffinlance's fics, so credit to Vathara for that.)
> 
> That theater scroll line doesn't actually exist, if you were wondering for some reason. I invented that. 
> 
> Not gonna lie, I was literally just vibing the entire time I wrote this and looking back I have no fucking clue if it's any good or not so yeah. ...Also I was planning for Hakuddles and I have no fucking clue how they didn't make it in. I guess Zuko said no.
> 
> Edit: Sorry, I forgot where I got 'Oolong Time' from. It was from a fic where Iroh was giving Aang firebending training and he told a joke to get him to laugh... I think.


End file.
